


abyssus abyssum invocat

by 500shadesofblue



Series: Echoing [1]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Magic, Multi, is that a tag I can use, mild bloodplay, witches and demons ooh what fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 11:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18799339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/500shadesofblue/pseuds/500shadesofblue
Summary: Come,her song whispers, reverberating through all the worlds, stacked up and compressed like a layer cake, lighting up months worth of runework in blinding radiance. It traces the lines and angles and curves until the call breaks through, calling to a like-soul as the light floods the room and paints the walls up to the ceiling, singing, bright.Come. Join power. Find belonging. Like calls to like, magic to magic, symphony to song. Come.The call connects.





	abyssus abyssum invocat

**Author's Note:**

> This has no impact or association on Echoes. Ace, Luffy, and Val are all wildly different people(?) here.
> 
> To be completely honest, this is all self-indulgent OOC fun with beloved character’s faces. Enjoy!

Luffy’s lounging around in full demon form, fully black-sclera’d and horns out, presence seeming almost too large for the overstuffed shack they call home. While it’s not unfa _mil_ iar, exactly, it is uncommon, and she has to make a conscious effort to keep the infernal influence he radiates from affecting the menagerie of magical plants growing in the backyard.

His toothy grin and his magic feel exactly the same, at least. Which is reassuring.

She checks over the runes for perhaps the two hundredth time, scrutinizing the red-black mixture of blood (hers), ichor (Luffy’s), and a very long combination of magical plants and animal products for fine tuning. Only the first two are entirely necessary ingredients, but all the rest flavor the summoning, and she likes to be precise.

Very precise.

“Val, c’mon! You know it’s all good. It feels riiiight,” Luffy whines, plastering the whole heavy length of himself to her back, draping over her shoulder and nuzzling at her neck like a cat. She purses her lips and tilts her face to the side to avoid being smacked by the very sharp and hard curving spikes of his horns, and her vision is - predictably - immediately obscured by shiny, lustrous red and black.

“Don’t bite,” she warns, because Luffy really _is_ the type to go for a snack any time he thinks he’d get away with it. “Open wounds, summoning, bad, blah. You know what I’m gonna say, Luffy, don’t make me actually say it.”

He licks at her pulsepoint. It feels _weird_ with the long, demonic, slightly-forked tongue. “Shishishi. Yeah, I know.”

He’s gone not even half a second later, standing off in the far corner opposite her, cheerful grin still on his face. “You wanna do it?” he calls out, smile never fading, horns nearly scraping the low-hanging gauzy fabrics on the ceiling, long claws on his feet _scritching_ at the worn and creaking floorboards. “Now’s the best time. Moon’s got good energy.”

The moon _does_ have good energy, actually. She’s pretty sure it’ll crest in about twenty seconds.

She pulses her magic in confirmation, kneels to the edge and presses her left palm to the outsourced rune for _moon,_ the right to the rune for _sun._ She hums a quick melody - mournful, then vibrant, minor to major and littered with near-dissonant duotonal scales - and she almost smiles and ruins it all when Luffy joins in, his tenor layering his song over hers, harmonizing, pressing his own blackened and clawed hands to _light_ and _dark_ on the other side of the lattice of summoning runes.

The magic of the world gives a throb.

It wavers and hums, calibrating, rippling in the air like a heat haze, and then it _slots_ into place, utterly perfect, laws of magic adhered to and stroked until they manage to cut through the fabric of the world and _call._

_Come,_ her song whispers, reverberating through all the worlds, stacked up and compressed like a layer cake, lighting up months worth of runework in blinding radiance. It traces the lines and angles and curves until the call breaks through, calling to a like-soul as the light floods the room and paints the walls up to the ceiling, singing, bright.  _Come. Join power. Find belonging. Like calls to like, magic to magic, symphony to song. Come._

The call connects.

She hears Luffy’s whoop of laughter even as a sonic boom and a _roar_ shatters the song and the quiet, the whole of her lit-up floorboards shining even brighter in the power of restraints, contrasting sharply against the dark of night and scant moonlight coming through her shoebox windows. _Fuck,_ she thinks, wild and untamed, hair rising and writhing from beneath the brim of her hat like seaweed underwater in the blast of force that tears from the summoning circle like a fierce wind, shed power and nothing less. Still, she stays put, palms firm and fingers curling on _moon_ and _sun,_ magic anchoring the whole circle tight to this reality, song fading from her voice and weaving into the circle itself.

_“Hell yeah!”_ Luffy shouts over the roaring wind, spade-tipped tail lashing behind him. He’s leaned over, palms pressed flat to the runes and mouth stretched in a feral grin, worn red buttoned tank top and denim shorts looking particularly incongruous against the black-to-red fade of his tail and horns, the unnaturally sharp-fanged grin, the blackened sclera and pointed ears, the pitch tipped clawed hands and feet.

_“Condense,”_ Val yells, except she doesn’t yell _condense_ at all, a discord of jangling notes spewing from her mouth instead, the hangings on the ceiling whipping in the fierce wind, her robes tugged at by grasping fingers. _Consolidate!_

With the sound of a bubble popping, the noise _zwoops_ into silence and the wind dies with the immediacy of a thrown egg hitting a brick wall.

And, standing in the middle of the lit-up circle, there’s a demon.

Her floor (in the circle) is on fire - black and orange flame, and she knows the color of fire doesn’t matter a damn when it comes to demons since she doesn’t know the proper order, the color won’t tell her anything - but the fact that he’s trying to light her circle on fire before anything else is telling. An ifrit, then, a demon of hellfire, destructive and full of wrath, from what she can feel of the magic and flame. (Of course, her floor isn’t _actually_ on fire - she’s a better witch than that - but she can feel the ifrit’s rage battering against the steadfast bulwark of her and Luffy’s summoning runes, so she can respect an attempt being made.)

Its skin is black as the night sky, strewn with _stars_ of all things, but the dizzying sight of its true form immediately fades as its wings flare, its tail lashes, and it snarls, whirling to try and find the summoner.

It locks eyes with her.

It flings itself at her with a roar, belching smoke and fire and sharp claws outstretched, but she doesn’t flinch as the walls of the circle catch it in a burst of light and a ring like a struck gong.

It roars again, keening, as it surges to its feet, and Val finally catches a good look at it.

It is - as most demons are - male, and unfairly beautiful. Pitch-black shaggy hair, orange irises and black sclera, dark spiraling horns that curve forward over its temples to point accusingly at wherever it stares. It’s pale all over now that the stars have faded, strewn with constellations of freckles where it isn’t blackened with demon magic, and it has the same fangs and clawed feet and fingers as Luffy, though the tail is spiked and the wings (feathered? bat? they keep changing) are very new.

_“Release me!”_

It howls, roaring in demontongue, infernal magic battering at the confines of the circle. It’s extraordinarily strong, she can feel it from here, manifesting in a blast of force that rattles the colored bottles crammed onto all her shelves, but her and Luffy’s circle is the buildup of almost a year’s worth of planning and a lifetime’s worth of magical expertise. It’s gonna take a _hell_ of a lot more raw power to even think about cracking that circle, especially with her and Luffy both anchoring it. There’s plenty to be said about Luffy, but he’s nothing if not incredibly strong.

“Ace?” Luffy calls out, plaintive.

There’s a popping noise.

The fires die, and she catches sight of the summoned demon’s face, painted disarmingly human with sheer emotion before he whirls around, searching frantically. “Luffy!”

“Ace!” Luffy shouts, grinning, and she sees his fingers twitching on the runes.

“Luffy, the circle!” She calls out, genuinely afraid. If he takes his hands off-

Luffy’s fingers still, though his eyes are wide and shining, breathtakingly familiar, black scleras and all. “Val, we- you need to make a contract with him.”

Luffy still hasn’t taken his eyes off the demon in the circle, the silent and stunned demon whose back Val is gazing at, muscled and winged and terminating in a long, thick black tail.

_He’s my brother,_ Luffy says, or maybe he doesn’t say it at all, sung into the space between them with all the burning light of a dying star.

* * *

She makes a contract with Ace.

Although ‘makes’ might be phrasing it a little generously. The iftrit goes down kicking and screaming the whole way.

Even with Luffy singing her praises in a continuous stream, steady and unrelenting, palms pressed to _light_ and _dark_ and his claws digging into the wood below, tail lashing and slit-pupiled like a cat, barely-restrained anticipation-

It’s just as well, because she’s pretty sure Luffy wasn’t gonna let the circle terminate without finding a way to bring his brother out of it. And, at her sincere question - _can we just let him out, or is he too destructive? -_ Luffy told her honestly that Ace would probably try to kill her and burn down her house as soon as possible if a proper contract wasn’t made.

He can’t kill her, but she really doesn’t want to lose her house. She has a lot of important things.

The previously prepared contract is there, of course, but it takes a hell of a lot of addendums to accommodate for the breadth of his magic, and thick cords of binding to anchor him to the mortal plane. Ace is _strong,_ a true ifrit, and without Luffy here she knows she wouldn’t be able to do it. That being said, their combined pool of roiling magic is more than enough, and Ace is successfully bound into a familiar-class partnership.

Not equal-partners, like her and Luffy. The new ifrit (Luffy’s brother or not) would definitely be draining her magic dry and killing her now if she did, so no thanks.

He can’t kill her - can’t deliberately damage her shit, can’t fuck stuff up, and Luffy’s there to watch - so she twists a pair of simple black shorts into being and tosses them in Luffy’s general direction before falling into bed.

She hears familiar laughter, hears the susurrus of _shishishi_ winding into her ears as strong arms lift her up and tuck her in, but she’s asleep before her head hits the pillow.

* * *

She wakes to shouting.

“-ake _up,_ or I’m gonna burn your fucking house down you piece of-”

“Quiet,” Val croaks, and a layer of magic settles over her ears.

She cracks open an eyelid.

The ifrit - Ace? - is crouched by her bedside, the gauzy shroud of the (enchanted) fabrics hanging from the low ceiling and settling over his bare shoulders. He looks very angry, mouth still moving and sharp teeth bared in a snarl _(wow_ those are some wicked fangs), eyes orange as living flame and peering into hers with unabashed rage, face framed by his dark hair.

“Luff,” she croaks. “Y’er bro.”

Luffy stirs, tail twining tighter around her calf, arms shifting around her waist as he grumbles into her hair. She thinks, for a single, supremely irritated moment that he’s in demon form in the bed, but no. Just the tail, from the look of his bare (and very human) hand over her belly, the feel of his more mundane warmth slotted in behind her.

Her eyes flick lazily to the ifrit’s face- _Ace’s_ face, might as well call him by his name - and he does, in fact, look even angrier. His mouth has stopped moving, though, so she lets the silencing spell slip from her ears like cool, trickling water.

“-ouldn’t yell so much, Ace,” and that’s Luffy, voice plaintive, the vibrations against the back of her neck resolving themselves into words. “You’re a familiar now. You gotta play nice.”

“I don’t gotta do _shit,”_ Ace spits, though thankfully not literally, considering that his very expressive face is mere inches from hers, and yes, his hair is catching on fire.

“Could’ya back up a bit?” Val murmurs, throat thick from the haze of sleep, shrugging off Luffy’s clinging arms with the ease of long practice.

“No,” Ace says, very succinctly. He enunciates.

She pauses.

His eyebrows are downturned, mouth curled into a fangy, stubborn frown. He’s still crouched with his face inches away, spade-tipped tail lashing, black horns pointed. At her.

Well, alright then. “Okay,” she says, rising from the disarray of covers, edging into his space in a series of fluid motions. “Stand wherever you’d like.”

He doesn’t back down, standing face-to-face with her (well, forehead-to-chin, but he’s looking down to her eyes), and Val knows that demons are big on challenging eye contact, so-

“I reject your challenge,” Val says evenly, brushing past him, ignoring him entirely, and Ace makes an inarticulate, white-hot noise of stifled rage.

* * *

“Stop that,” she mutters to Luffy, irritated, head tipped back, vulnerable arch of her throat exposed.

Luffy is lapping over her pulse - laving, really, he’s going so slow it’s almost sensual - gently scraping his fangs over her skin. It makes her shudder, which in turn makes her _more_ irritated.

She floods the true expanse of her mild reproach over and into the bond, and Luffy draws back, gives her a fangy, hell-raising grin. “Not sorry. He’s totally mad.”

Ace isn’t really ever _not_ mad, but now, he’s stewing in the corner, watching what’s happening with hunger in his eyes.

Obviously, she can’t let him feed from her directly- he’d rip her throat out. Feeding is one of the things that’s entirely outside the covenant, so if she consents to it (as she has to Luffy’s feedings, part of their equal-partnership deal), the consequences are entirely on the summoner’s head. (So, since Ace still has to eat, he’s been enjoying the jittery (and still-intimate, but hey, there’s not really any other options) flood of pure magic infusions. Nothing compared to the sheer pleasure demons gets from feeding directly (so Luffy’s told her), but there’s no other choice, seeing as her magic is the force tethering Ace to this plane.)

And she trusts Luffy with her life and more, has for as long as she can remember, but that doesn’t mean he’s not being an asshole about this.

“I get to drink from the source,” Luffy purrs, tracing the edge of his claw over her collarbone. “All that hot blood…”

“Oi. The _source_ is standing right here, and if you don’t stop being a tease and tormenting your brother, the source might take a nice long ride on her broom out over the marsh to get some Dragon’s Lace for her upcoming solstice potion.”

“Nah,” Luffy smiles, wicked grin melting into something a little more apologetic. He leans close, licks at her chin. _Apology._ “I’ll chow down.”

His fangs slip into her throat.

The spike of adrenaline always comes, along with the pain, but it’s immediately soothed by Luffy’s magic reaching out to hers, twining around her even as his arms come up to wrap around her body in the physical world. His throat bobs as he swallows, sucking, but her eyes are closed as she breathes evenly through her mouth.

She hears a snarl from the corner, but doesn’t have the wherewithal to handle things delicately. She sends a flood of magic over her one-way, fragile and newborn link with Ace - more like a leash than anything - shoving _patience_ at him with all the subtlety of a battering ram.

He quiets.

One beat passes. Another. She’s hyperaware, which means she feels the instant that Luffy pushes the feeding from _mildly pleasant_ to _pleasure,_ shuddering reflexively at the flood of desire that comes roaring through her.

“Luffy!” she squeaks out, strangled, outraged, hands twisting in his hair. She yanks on his horns, reflex more than thought, fingertips sparking on the warm, slick-smooth glossy surface.

His fangs slip out of her neck a second later, tongue lapping over to close the wounds, desire fading as soon as it appeared, Luffy drawing back with a sheepish look on his face and lips wet with her blood.

“...Oops?” Luffy says, grinning sheepishly. His teeth are stained red. She feels her eyebrow twitch.

* * *

Honestly, what the fuck are the actual odds? Can she get a legitimate report?

The circle she and Luffy built (gone, now, faded with the waning light of the full moon) was sure as hell a strong one, but Ace is - if Luffy’s scant explanations are to be believed - Luffy’s _brother._ That specific demon connected? Among _billions_ that could’ve answered the call?

They don’t share the same sire, apparently, so it’s not even the call of Luffy’s ichor that did it. No, despite the power in it, especially in her brand of summoning, it wasn’t blood.

So what was it, really? Her _song?_

_(Join power. Find belonging. Like calls to like, magic to magic, symphony to song.)_

Hah.

* * *

Ace isn’t a backseat potion brewer, but he’s far more interested in the process than Luffy’s ever been.

She tips a splash of viper’s venom into her cauldron, gives the bubbling pink mixture a counterclockwise stir, tosses in the cockatrice feather, briskly stirs clockwise and twice, cutting through the middle in an upwards stroke as the feather dissolves and the viscous liquid bleeds frothy green-

_Something you need?_ she considers saying to Ace, but she refrains. Concentration is key here.

(Even if the squinty-eyed demon hunched over like a gargoyle on her spare rickety chair, peering intently into her cauldron, is more distracting than anything else.)

* * *

Sometimes, it’s easy to forget.

And other times it’s _exceedingly_ clear that Luffy isn’t human.

He’s got a human shape, more or less, and even his ‘demon’ form basically just has sharp additions, no real change to his silhouette.

Now that he’s got his brother, his kin, something in him has turned back wild, hellfire origins never-faded but renewed. Something in him is restless, is pressing, competitive, slit-pupiled and anticipatory.

She can’t figure out why. She can’t figure out Ace, star-strewn and burning like a pyre, hungry and filled with cavernous, yawning emptiness.

She’ll figure it out. She always does.

**Author's Note:**

> So many fun ideas for this verse I’ll never write!
> 
> -Luffy has been with Val since they were kids. Their past is murky.
> 
> -Perona is another witch. She’s a necromancer, and Zoro - a dead swordsman from a bygone era with a restless soul - has been summoned by her. Eventually, Val challenges Perona (in a sort of familiar v. familiar traditional witchery bout) and Zoro is Acquired by Val, as Ace wins against Zoro (and demonstrates some firepower while he’s at it). Perona lets him go because she wants him to be happy, and his (vengeance) ambitions aren’t being fulfilled with her.
> 
> -Perona has a bunch of other ghosts and zombies too, of course.  
> -She and Val stay friends and they frequently visit each other. They trade ingredients, services, and gossip. Val frequently brews complex potions for Perona - and takes care of things for her that suit her abilities - while Perona provides Val with countless rare ingredients and info. Perona also specializes in curses, dark magic, and manipulation.  
> -Mihawk is associated with Perona somehow. Undoubtedly in a hilarious way.
> 
> -Nami is a weather witch. Sanji (and a plethora of other devoted followers) are her familiars, though Sanji is her biggest powerhouse. She and Val are friends, and Luffy likes her a lot. Nami freaks Ace out with her brazen flirting.
> 
> -Sabo is a dragon. He’s been sleeping for thousands of years, thought dead by his brothers. (Almost all the dragons are gone or captured.) Ace, Luffy, and Val go on a Journey to find him and wake him up.  
> -Sabo offers to become a familiar basically immediately. Val’s like ‘uh, you’re a Dragon, you’re a little out of my league’ and Sabo’s like ‘my brothers are here, you freed me from sleep, and I have no desire to be bound by anyone else.’
> 
> -He’s also sitting on a trove of magical artifacts and gold, so that’s nice.  
> -Sabo gets an equal partnership right away and Ace is Not Jealous(tm). Also, this is a Big Deal because with Luffy, Ace, /and/ Sabo’s magic pooled with hers, Val is actually absurdly strong. Lowkey, but not lowkey enough, because-
> 
> -Ace gets yoinked by Whitebeard.
> 
> -Whitebeard is a Warlock older than time with a million familiars (the most famous of which are a phoenix and a golem made of diamond). He finds out Ace is the lost heir apparent, that Luffy /is/ heir apparent, courtesy of Shanks, that Sabo is a fucking /dragon,/ and he’s like ‘oh, hello.’
> 
> -Ace wrapped in chains, etc. At this point, things are Uncertain between Val and Ace (aka he’s like ‘I don’t want to leave and I trust you but I have poor communication skills’) and Whitebeard is like ‘you’re not on equal terms with this demon. We’ll treat him right here.’
> 
> -Val is like Doubt(tm) and Ace wants to go back. Val twists her magic and Summons Sabo.
> 
> -Cue a huge portal opening in the sky and a golden dragon bigger than ten ships and twice as vast tearing through the air and landing behind an Upset Val and Luffy.
> 
>  
> 
> -Luffy is heir apparent to hell. He got the ‘strawhat’ from Shanks (at least, it turns into a strawhat in human form, as that’s what Shanks had it as and that’s what Luffy prefers).  
> -In demon form, it manifests as an obvious-ass glowing red orb that floats between his horns like a miniature sun. Subtle(tm).
> 
> -Shanks is current king of hell. Roger, Ace’s sire, was in the past but is now dead.  
> -Rouge was the coolest witch of all time but she is also now, sadly, dead.
> 
> More Details:  
> -Val is an Echo Witch (hah) and her power lies in her runework, invocations, artifacts, and demon familiars.
> 
> -I have their designs sketched out and they’re lit.
> 
> -Luffy’s horns are like an upside-down letter omega, except that the flat bits point straight upwards instead. The ‘strawhat’ hovers between the curving round bit. They color fade from black (at the base) to red.
> 
> -Ace is described in detail here. This isn’t what he looks like in Echoes, but I wanted to play with his design.
> 
> -Sabo is a dragon. Even in ‘human’ form he’s scaled and clawed and fangy (with wings!), though he’s less obviously-chaotic than Ace and Lu, so Val gets Fooled into thinking that he’s not as much of a chaos agent. (Spoiler: he is.)
> 
> -(This whole world is full of magic and clutter and Fun Things.)
> 
>  
> 
> That’s basically everything? Yes, I know witch/familiar au’s are excuses for reverse harems. I take Echoes really seriously and I care very much about the characters and their personhood, so I have to commodify them in /some/ universe. This is one of said universes. :’)
> 
> Haha, the dynamic between Lu and Val is so different than in Echoes... Luffy is very different here too. Though, of course, Val is both Friend and Food, so his fixation on feeding should make sense.
> 
> I’m running out of space! I’m working on Echoes, I swear. Just had to have some fun.
> 
> Talk to y’all later. :D


End file.
